Ocnus.Net
Death Grip
By John B. Judis, New Republic 17/8/07
Aug 23, 2007 - 9:20:41 AM
In June 2004 I went door to door in a
white, working- class neighborhood of Martinsburg, West Virginia, a small
blue-collar town in decline. There, I found voters disillusioned with both the
Iraq war and the flagging economy. But, when I returned five months later-- the
Sunday before the election--I had difficulty digging up anyone who didn't plan
to vote for George W. Bush. As far as I could tell, Martinsburg voters were
backing him for two reasons: first, because he opposed gay marriage and
abortion ("There are two gays around the corner who are voting for
Kerry," one fellow, with a Bush sign in his yard, advised me scornfully
from his stoop); and, second, because he was leading the war on terrorism
("I feel more safe with Bush in there," an elderly disabled man
explained). There was still grumbling over the war, the economy, and other
topics--the same elderly man who praised Bush for making him feel safe also
bemoaned America's lack of universal health insurance--but these issues were
eclipsed by the threat of gay weddings and terrorist attacks.
Bush carried West Virginia and
won the election partly because he ran a better campaign than John Kerry. But
that wasn't the only reason. There was something odd about the support for Bush
in places like West Virginia. Unlike voters in New York City, voters in
Martinsburg had little to fear from terrorist attacks; yet they backed Bush,
while New Yorkers voted for Kerry. If gay marriage were legalized, Martinsburg
would be unlikely to host massive numbers of same-sex weddings; yet voters I
talked to were haunted by the specter of gay marriage.
Some pundits have tried to
explain away this mystery by arguing that Bush backers voted for their values
rather than their interests. But this explanation is unsatisfying, since many
of those voters didn't opt for "family values" in 1992 and 1996, when
the country elected a well-known philanderer as president.
In fact, many political
scientists can't begin to explain what took place in West Virginia in 2004. In
recent years, the field has become dominated by rational choice theorists, who
have tried to develop complex mathematical equations to predict voting
behavior. These equations rest on a view of voters as calculating consumers
choosing a product on the basis of relative cost and utility--a view that
generally leaves little room for the possibility of voters acting irrationally.
There is, however, one group of
scholars--members of the relatively new field of political psychology--who are
trying to explain voter preferences that can't be easily quantified. The best
general introduction to this field is Drew Westen's recent book,
The
Political Brain, but the research that is perhaps most relevant to the 2004
election has been conducted by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg,
and Tom Pyszczynski. In the early 1980s, they developed what they clumsily
called "terror management theory." Their idea was not about how to
clear the subways in the event of an attack, but about how people cope with the
terrifying and potentially paralyzing realization that, as human beings, we are
destined to die. Their experiments showed that the mere thought of one's
mortality can trigger a range of emotions--from disdain for other races, religions,
and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a
heightened attraction to traditional mores. Initially, the three scholars
didn't attempt to apply their theory to elections. But, after September 11,
they conducted experiments designed to do exactly that. What they found sheds
new light on the role that fear of death plays in contemporary politics--and,
arguably, goes a long way toward unraveling the mystery of Martinsburg.
S
olomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski met as graduate students
at the University of Kansas in the late '70s. (Today, they are professors at
Skidmore College, the University of Arizona, and the University of Colorado,
respectively.) In 1980, Solomon discovered the work of Ernest Becker, an
anthropologist whose last book,
The Denial of Death, had won the
Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Becker was part of a generation of American social
psychologists--stretching from David Riesman, who wrote
The Lonely Crowd
in 1950, to Christopher Lasch, who penned
The Culture of Narcissism in
1979--who operated outside the academic discipline of psychology and were far
more influenced by Freud and Marx than by B.F. Skinner and John B. Watson.
Riesman, Lasch, and company are no longer avidly read--partly because of the
fascination with neuroscience, but also because today's students and academics
don't appear as interested in fundamental questions about life, death, love,
and history.
Becker, who died of colon cancer
in 1974 at the age of 49, had a checkered academic career, largely because his
work failed to fit within academic departments. Although a riveting
lecturer--he filled the 700-seat Wheeler Hall auditorium in Berkeley for a
class on Marx and Rousseau--he bounced from school to school on short-term
contracts. In 1967, Michael Lerner (later of
Tikkun) and I helped
organize a demonstration on the Sproul Hall steps to demand that Berkeley's
anthropology department hire Becker permanently, but to no avail. Two years
later, Becker finally found a home at Simon Fraser University outside
Vancouver, where he wrote what turned out to be his most influential books.
In
The Denial of Death,
Becker tried to explain how fear of one's own demise lies at the center of
human endeavor. "Man's anxiety," Becker wrote, "results from the
human paradox that man is an animal who is conscious of his animal
limitation." Becker described how human beings defend themselves against
this fundamental anxiety by constructing cultures that promise symbolic or
literal immortality to those who live up to established standards. Among other
things, we practice religions that promise immortality; produce children and
works of art that we hope will outlive us; seek to submerge our own
individuality in a larger, enduring community of race or nation; and look to
heroic leaders not only to fend off death, but to endow us with the courage to
defy it. We also react with hostility toward individuals and rival cultures
that threaten to undermine the integrity of our own.
Solomon, Greenberg, and
Pyszczynski first presented a summary of Becker's ideas at the Society for
Experimental Social Psychology in 1984. As they talked, the three later wrote,
"well-known psychologists jostled each other vigorously to escape."
Afterwards, they submitted their take on Becker to
The American Psychologist
and were peremptorily turned down. "I have no doubt that these ideas are
of absolutely no interest to any psychologist, alive or dead," the
journal's reviewer replied. Later, the journal's editor told the three
psychologists that, if they wanted to be taken seriously in their profession,
they would have to find ways to test their ideas experimentally. And that's
what they proceeded to do.
Their first experiment was
published in 1989. To test the hypothesis that recognition of mortality evokes
"worldview defense"--their term for the range of emotions, from
intolerance to religiosity to a preference for law and order, that they believe
thoughts of death can trigger--they assembled 22 Tucson municipal court judges.
They told the judges they wanted to test the relationship between personality
traits and bail decisions, but, for one group, they inserted in the middle of
the personality questionnaire two exercises meant to evoke awareness of their
mortality. One asked the judges to "briefly describe the emotions that the
thought of your own death arouses in you"; the other required them to
"jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you
physically as you die and once you are physically dead." They then asked
the judges to set bail in the hypothetical case of a prostitute whom the
prosecutor claimed was a flight risk. The judges who did the mortality
exercises set an average bail of $455. The control group that did not do the
exercises set it at an average of $50. The psychologists knew they were onto
something.
Over the next decade, the three
performed similar experiments to illustrate how awareness of death could
provoke worldview defense. They showed that what they now called
"mortality salience" affected people's view of other races,
religions, and nations. When they had students at a Christian college evaluate
essays by what they were told were a Christian and a Jewish author, the group
that did the mortality exercises expressed a far more negative view of the
essay by the Jewish author than the control group did. (German psychologists
would find a similar reaction among German subjects toward Turks.) They also
conducted numerous experiments to show that mortality exercises evoked
patriotic responses. The subjects who did the exercises took a far more
negative view of an essay critical of the United States than the control group
did and also expressed greater veneration for cultural icons like the flag. The
three even devised an experiment to show that, after doing the mortality exercises,
conservatives took a much harsher view of liberals, and vice versa.
In conducting these experiments,
they took care not to tell the subjects what they were doing. They also devised
experiments to answer obvious objections to their theory. For instance, they
substituted other exercises designed to increase anxiety--by reminding subjects
of an upcoming examination or a painful dental visit--to determine if these
thoughts had the same effect as the mortality exercises, but they didn't. It
wasn't anxiety per se that triggered worldview defense; it was anxiety
specifically about one's own death.
Drawing on psychoanalysis, but
looking for experimental verification, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski
developed a theory to explain how mortality salience works. When they started
conducting experiments, the psychologists had believed that the sheer
recognition of one's mortality directly triggered worldview defense. But, when
other psychologists, varying the procedure, failed to reproduce the same
results, they discovered an important caveat: When they would ask sub- jects to
make judgments immediately following the mortality exercises, the exercises
would have little effect. It was only when they interspersed a diversionary
interval between the exercises and the judgments that the exercises had their
full impact.
Freud had distinguished between
"primary processes" of thought that were unconscious and irrational
and "secondary processes" that were conscious and rational. Solomon,
Greenberg, and Pyszczynski reasoned that, when individuals first feel anxiety
about their mortality, they respond consciously by invoking the usual
psychological defenses-- for instance, telling themselves that "it's not
me, now." That allayed conscious anxiety, but, after the conscious anxiety
about mortality had subsided, the thought remained unconscious and active and
led people to erect worldview defenses. "The implicit knowledge of death
rather than the current focal awareness is the motivating factor," they
wrote. "Once the problem of death is out of focal attention but while it
is still highly accessible, terror management concerns are addressed by ...
bolstering faith in the worldview."
To demonstrate this effect,
Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski devised experiments using subliminal cues.
They asked subjects to evaluate whether two words on a computer screen were
related. One group of subjects had the word "death" flashed
subliminally between the two words, while another group had the word
"field" flashed. Afterward, neither group said they saw more than two
words at a time. But, by using word-fragment completion tests--for instance, is
"coff_ _" completed as "coffin" or "coffee"?--the
psychologists were able to establish that the group which had "death"
flashed before them, but not the control group, was unconsciously thinking
about death. The psychologists then asked the groups to evaluate essays
critical and supportive of the United States. Those who had "death"
flashed before them had a much more negative view of the essay critical of the
United States than those who had seen the word "field." They
exhibited the same pattern of judgment as those who had done the mortality
exercises but, unlike them, did not need an interval before making judgments.
The psychologists still lacked a full explanation of how this worked, but they
had shown that, in their words, "worldview defense in response to thoughts
of death does not require any conscious awareness of such thoughts."
Indeed, it worked best when these thoughts were unconscious.
B
y the end of the 1990s, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski
had made their reputation among social psychologists. Psychologists around the
world--particularly in Germany, the Netherlands, and Israel--were using their
theories to devise experiments of their own. In October 2001, the American
Psychological Association asked the three to write a book on how their theories
could explain Americans' reaction to September 11.
In the Wake of 9/11,
which appeared in 2003, recounted more than a decade of experiments and
speculated on how the public's reaction to the attack-- including heightened
religiosity, patriotism, and support for both Bush and his evangelical
swagger--could be explained as worldview defense.
The three scholars also began
devising experiments to test this theory. The first of these explored whether
reminders of September 11 functioned as mortality reminders. In the spring of
2002, the psychologists, along with five colleagues, conducted an experiment at
the University of Missouri, where subjects had either "911,"
"WTC" (for the World Trade Center), or "573" (the area code
for Columbia) flashed subliminally between word associations. Afterward, they
completed word-fragment tests to see whether thoughts of death were stirring in
their unconscious. The psychologists found the same pattern between
"911" and "WTC," on the one hand, and "573," on
the other, that they had earlier found between "death" and
"field." They concluded that reminders of September 11 awakened
unconscious mortality thoughts. Later experiments would further confirm this.
They then explored whether
Bush's popularity in the years after September 11 stemmed in part from
Americans' need for a charismatic figure who could help them overcome these
thoughts. Bush's appeal, the psychologists speculated, lay "in his image
as a protective shield against death, armed with high-tech weaponry, patriotic
rhetoric, and the resolute invocation of doing God's will to rid the world of
evil.'" In 2002, the psychologists, aided by two colleagues, conducted an
experiment at Brooklyn College that showed that mortality reminders
dramatically enhanced the appeal of a hypothetical candidate who told voters,
"You are not just an ordinary citizen: You are part of a special state and
a special nation."
Next, they began testing Bush's
appeal directly. In October 2003, the three scholars, together with five
colleagues, assembled 97 undergraduates at Rutgers to participate in what the
students thought was a study of the relationship between personality and politics.
One group was given the mortality exercises. The other wasn't. They then read
an essay expressing a "highly favorable opinion of the measures taken by
President Bush with regards to 9/11 and the Iraqi conflict." It read, in
part:
Personally
I endorse the actions of President Bush and the members of his administration
who have taken bold action in Iraq. I appreciate our President's wisdom
regarding the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power and his Homeland
Security Policy is a source of great comfort to me. ... We need to stand behind
our President and not be distracted by citizens who are less than patriotic.
Ever since the attack on our country on September 11, 2001, Mr. Bush has been a
source of strength and inspiration to us all.
This was not the kind of
statement that would appeal to most Rutgers undergraduates, and indeed, on
average, members of the control group rated it unfavorably. But those who did
the mortality exercises on balance favored the statement. In February 2004, the
psychologists repeated the experiment, but this time they used September 11
cues. They had one group of students write down the emotions that September 11
aroused in them and describe what happened on that day. They got the same
results as before: On average, those in the September 11 group approved of the
statement, while those who didn't do the exercises disapproved. Based on
political questionnaires they had the students fill out, they also found that
the September 11 and mortality exercises "increased both conservatives'
and liberals' liking for Bush."
Then, in late September 2004,
the psychologists, along with two colleagues from Rutgers, tested whether
mortality exercises influenced whom voters would support in the upcoming
presidential election. They conducted the study among 131 Rutgers
undergraduates who said they were registered and planned to vote in November.
The control group that completed a personality survey, but did not do the
mortality exercises, predictably favored Kerry by four to one. But the students
who did the mortality exercises favored Bush by more than two to one. This
strongly suggested that Bush's popularity was sustained by mortality reminders.
The psychologists concluded in a paper published after the election that the
government terror warnings, the release of Osama bin Laden's video on October
29, and the Bush campaign's reiteration of the terrorist threat (Cheney on
election eve: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll
get hit again") were integral to Bush's victory over Kerry. "From a
terror management perspective," they wrote, "the United States'
electorate was exposed to a wide-ranging multidimensional mortality salience
induction."
I
n their experiments, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski make
a good case that mortality reminders from September 11 enhanced Bush's
popularity through November 2004. But, on the basis of their research, it is
possible to draw even broader conclusions about U.S. politics after September
11. Mortality reminders not only enhanced the appeal of Bush's political style
but also deepened and broadened the appeal of the conservative social positions
that Republicans had been running on.
For instance, because worldview
defense increases hostility toward other races, religions, nations, and
political systems, it helps explain the rage toward France and Germany that
erupted prior to the Iraq war, as well as the recent spike in hostility toward
illegal immigrants. Also central to worldview defense is the protection of
tradition against social experimentation, of community values against
individual prerogatives--as was evident in the Tucson experiment with the
judges--and of religious dictates against secular norms. For many
conservatives, this means opposition to abortion and gay marriage. This may
well explain why family values became more salient in 2004--a year in which
voters were supposed to be unusually focused on foreign policy--than it had
been from 1992 through 2000. Indeed, from 2001 to 2004, polls show an increase
in opposition to abortion and gay marriage, along with a growing religiosity.
According to Gallup, the percentage of voters who believed abortion should be
"illegal in all circumstances" rose from 17 percent in 2000 to 20
percent in 2002 and would still be at 19 percent in 2004. Even church
attendance by
atheists, according to one poll, increased from 3 to 10
percent from August to November 2001.
In the months after September
11, most Americans were caught up in the same reaction to the tragedy--and that
included adulation for Bush, even among many Democrats. But over the next few
years, faced with two elections, Bush had to maintain his popularity; and he
did so by constantly reviving memories of that dark day. As the 2002 election
approached, voters turned their attention to the recession, as well as Enron
and other scandals--all to the Democrats' favor. At that point, Bush, who had
stood aside in the November 2001 gubernatorial elections that Democrats won,
sought to base the 2002 election on terrorism. Bush and Karl Rove used the full
arsenal of scare tactics to evoke fears of another September 11. The result was
that the electorate became sharply polarized between conservatives and liberals
and between Republicans and Democrats, while those caught in the middle tended to
side with the Repub- licans--exactly as the psychologists' experiments might
have predicted.
Some political analysts harshly
criticized Kerry in 2004 for failing to counter Bush's charismatic style with
an equally attractive appeal of his own. Many, like
Slate's Chris
Suellentrop, complained that Kerry lacked vision. "Vision without details
beats details without vision," Suellentrop wrote. Others, like Thomas
Frank, wrote that Kerry should have countered Bush's "cultural
populism" with "genuine economic populism." But, if Solomon,
Greenberg, and Pyszczynski are right, it would have been very difficult for any
politician--not just the stolid Kerry--to overcome Bush's built-in advantage
from being the nation's leader at a time when many voters feared another
attack. In 2004, Bush, as the commander-in-chief, still had the unconscious on
his side. And that advantage may have proven insuperable.
S
oon after the 2004 election, the mood in the country began to
shift. Reminders of September 11 lingered, but they were increasingly displaced
by worries over the Iraq war and anger over the growing scandals within the
Bush administration and the Republican Congress. Bush's incompetence in
responding to Katrina tarnished his image as a father-protector. Says Solomon, "Bush
became less of a useful object to unload non-conscious anxieties about
death."
One explanation for what
happened psychologically can be drawn from experiments that Solomon, Greenberg,
and Pyszczynski conducted in the mid-'90s. These showed that there were
conditions under which the mortality exercises had a reduced impact. One such
situation occurred when the experimenter repeatedly told the subjects to make a
"careful" response to the questions rather than a
"gut-level" or "natural" or "first" response. In
those cases where the experimenter urged care and deliberation, the
psychologists concluded, subjects acted on a "rational" basis that
reduced the influence of unconscious anxieties.
Something like that might have
happened after the 2004 election, as voters, forced to weigh other
concerns--Iraq, Katrina, the Abramoff scandals--subjected reminders of
September 11 to greater thought and skepticism. These associations made Bush
"less of a useful object." It could also be that active memories of
September 11 have begun to fade for many Americans--just as memories of Pearl
Harbor did for an earlier generation--reducing the effect that these memories
have on unconscious fears. The reduction of mortality salience is evident not
just in growing public dissatisfaction with Bush, but in reduced support for
conservative social causes. The average annual percentage of those believing
abortion should be illegal dropped from 19 percent in 2004 to 15 percent in
2006, and the percentage believing it should be legal "under any
circumstances" rose from 24 to 30 percent. The post September 11 outburst
of religiosity also began to abate, particularly among the young. These changes
in public sentiment, which reflected the diminished psychological impact of
September 11, help explain the Democratic triumph of 2006.
Of course, there are still
voters within the Republican electorate whose hearts beat to the rhythms of
September 11 and who are still engaged in a passionate defense of their
worldview. They continue to identify the war in Iraq with the war on terror;
they worry about illegal aliens and terrorists crossing the border; some even
judge the growing public opposition to Bush as further confirmation of his role
as protector. These voters appear particularly attracted to Rudy Giuliani,
whose entire campaign is based upon reminding voters of September 11. And, if
Giuliani is the Republican nominee in 2008, the election may pivot on his
ability to use reminders of September 11 to provoke the public into another
massive bout of worldview defense.
But, right now, it doesn't look
promising for any candidate who hopes to follow Bush's 2004 script. The voters
of 2008, including those in Martinsburg, will probably be buffeted by competing
emotions about Iraq and the war on terrorism, and therefore less inclined to
base their decisions on gay marriage. Barring another assault on American soil,
the moment of September 11--and the reminder of mortality that it brought--may
well have passed. And with it, too, the ascendancy of politicians who exploited
the fear of death that lies within us all.
Source: Ocnus.net 2007